These modifiers will help you play DOS games on a trackpad or one-button mouse:
Action | Shortcut |
---|---|
Click the right mouse button | Ctrl ⌃+click |
Click the left and right mouse buttons simultaneously | Ctrl ⌃+Opt ⌥+click or three-finger tap on trackpad |
Lock/unlock the mouse from the window
This will also reveal the menu bar in full screen mode |
Cmd ⌘+click |
If these mouse shortcuts conflict with a game’s own controls, you can change them for that game from the Mouse Inspector.
Action | Shortcut |
---|---|
Skip the default program and start up at the DOS prompt | Hold Opt ⌥ while gamebox is loading |
Show/hide the Inspector panel | Cmd ⌘+I |
Toggle the numeric keypad | Cmd+U or hold Fn |
Switch to/from full screen mode | Cmd ⌘+F |
Pause the emulation | Cmd ⌘+P or ![]() |
Fast-forward the emulation | Hold Cmd ⌘+Opt ⌥+⇢ or hold ![]() |
Speed up/slow down the emulation | Cmd ⌘+Opt ⌥+⇡/⇣ |
Switch to previous/next CD | Cmd ⌘+Shift ⇧+⇠/⇢ |
Take a screenshot | Cmd ⌘+Shift ⇧+S |
Additional keyboard shortcuts can be found alongside each item in Boxer’s application menus.
Many DOS games rely on a numeric keypad, which does not exist on Macbooks or Apple Wireless Keyboards.
Instead, you can hold down Fn to make part of the keyboard act as a numpad:
The 7-8-9 numpad keys match up to the same numbers on the regular keyboard: you can use this to orient your fingers to the simulated numpad.
If you don’t want to keep Fn held down to access the numpad, you can also turn the numpad behaviour on or off with
. This will take effect until you toggle the option again.Mac keyboards adopt the F1–F12 keys as hotkeys to control volume, screen brightness and other system functions. To make those keys act as regular function keys, hold down fn as you press the function key.
You can also send function key signals directly to DOS using the
menu.Some OS X hotkeys overlap with the control schemes for DOS games, and can get in the way when playing. This is especially common with the Ctrl ⌃+⇠/⇢ shortcut to switch Spaces.
If possible, Boxer will disable these OS X hotkeys while you’re playing so they won’t interfere. To let Boxer do this, you must have “Enable access for assistive devices” turned on in your OS X Universal Access preferences pane.
Boxer emulates an MS-DOS PC keyboard layout, and special characters (such as punctuation) are often in different places than where they’re labelled your Mac keyboard.
Try nearby keys and Shift ⇧-ed keys to find the character you’re looking for. On non-US keyboards, you can also hold down the right-hand Opt ⌥ key to access additional special characters.
Some keys found on DOS-era PC keyboards don’t exist at all on a Mac keyboard. If you have a game that needs such keys, you can send them using the
menu.